especially as Russian literature came into its own, humane feelings and attitudes became more widespread. Such leading writers as Pushkin and particularly Turgenev, who in 1852 published in book form his magnificent collection of stories,
Finally, the Crimean War provided additional evidence of the deficiencies and dangers of serfdom which found reflection both in the poor physical condition and listlessness of the recruits and in the general economic and technological backwardness of the country. Besides, as Rieber recently emphasized, Russia had essentially to rely on a standing army without a reserve, because the government was afraid to allow soldiers to return to villages.
At the time of the coronation, about a year after his assumption of power, Alexander II, addressing the gentry of Moscow, made the celebrated
Statement that it would be better to begin to abolish serfdom from above than to wait until it would begin to abolish itself from below, and asked the gentry to consider the matter. Although the government experienced great difficulty in eliciting any initiative from the landlords on the subject of emancipation, it finally managed to seize upon an offer by the gentry of the three Lithuanian provinces to discuss emancipation without land. The ensuing imperial rescript made it clear that emancipation was indeed official policy and, furthermore, that emancipation would have to be with land. At about the same time restrictions were lifted from the discussion of the abolition of serfdom in the press. In the wave of expectation and enthusiasm that swept the liberals and radicals after the publication of the rescript even Herzen exclaimed to Alexander II: 'Thou hast conquered, ? Galilean!'
Eventually, in 1858, gentry committees were established in all provinces to consider emancipation, while a bureaucratic Main Committee of nine members was set up in St. Petersburg. Except for a few diehards, the landlords assumed a realistic position and accepted the abolition of serfdom once the government had made its will clear, but they wanted the reform to be carried out as advantageously for themselves as possible. The gentry of southern and south-central Russia, with its valuable, fertile soil, wanted to retain as much land as possible and preferred land to a monetary recompense; the gentry of northern and north-central Russia, by contrast, considered serf labor and the resulting obrok as their main asset and, therefore, while relatively willing to part with much of their land, insisted on a high monetary payment in return for the loss of serf labor. Gentry committees also differed on such important issues as the desirable legal position of the liberated serfs and the administration to be provided for them.
The opinions of provincial committees went to the Editing Commission - actually two commissions that sat together and formed a single body - created at the beginning of 1859 and composed of public figures interested in the peasant question, such as the Slavophiles George Samarin and Prince Vladimir Cherkassky, as well as of high officials. After twenty months of work the Editing Commission submitted its plan of reform to the Main Committee, whence it went eventually to the State Council. After its quick consideration by the State Council, Alexander II signed the emancipation manifesto on March 3, 1861 -February 19, Old Style. Public announcement followed twelve days later.
Throughout its protracted and cumbersome formulation and passage the emancipation reform faced the hostility of conservatives in government and society. That a far-reaching law was finally enacted can be largely credited to the determined efforts of so-called 'liberals,' including officials such as Nicholas Miliutin, the immediate assistant to the minister of the interior and the leading figure in the Editing Commission, and participants from
the public like George Samarin. Two members of the imperial family, the tsar's brother Grand Duke Constantine and the tsar's aunt Grand Duchess Helen, belonged to the 'liberals.' More important, Alexander II himself repeatedly sided with them, while his will became law for such devoted bureaucrats as Jacob Rostovtsev - a key figure in the emancipation - who cannot be easily classified as either 'conservative' or 'liberal.' The emperor in effect forced the speedy passage of the measure through an antagonistic State Council, which managed to add only one noxious provision to the law, that permitting a 'pauper's allotment,' which will be mentioned later. Whereas the conservatives defended the interests and rights of the gentry, the 'liberals' were motivated by their belief that the interests of the state demanded a thoroughgoing reform and by their views of what would constitute a just settlement.
The law of the nineteenth of February abolished serfdom. Thenceforth human bondage was to disappear from Russian life. It should be noted, however, that, even if we exclude from consideration certain temporary provisions that prolonged various serf obligations for different periods of time, the reform failed to give the peasants a status equal to that of other social classes: they had to pay a head tax, were tied to their communes, and were judged on the basis of customary law. In addition to landowners' serfs, the new freedom was extended to peasants on the lands of the imperial family and to the huge and complex category of state peasants.
Together with their liberty, serfs who had been engaged in farming received land: household serfs did not. While the detailed provisions of the land settlement were extremely complicated and different from area to area, the peasants were to obtain roughly half the land, that part which they had been tilling for themselves, the other half staying with the landlords. They had to repay the landlords for the land they acquired and, because few serfs could pay anything, the government compensated the gentry owners by means of treasury bonds. Former serfs in turn were to reimburse the state through redemption payments spread over a period of forty-nine years. As an alternative, serfs could take one-quarter of their normal parcel of land, the so-called 'pauper's allotment,' and pay nothing. Except in the Ukraine and a few other areas, land was given not to individual peasants, but to a peasant commune - called an
The emancipation of the serfs can be called a great reform, although an American historian probably exaggerated when he proclaimed it to be the greatest legislative act in history. It directly affected the status of some fifty-two million peasants, over twenty million of them serfs of private land
owners. That should be compared, for example, with the almost simultaneous liberation of four million black slaves in the United States, obtained as a result of a huge Civil War, not by means of a peaceful legal process. The moral value of the emancipation was no doubt tremendous, if incalculable. It might be added that the arguments of Pokrovsky and some other historians attempting to show that the reform was a clever conspiracy between the landlords and the government at the expense of the peasants lack substance: they are contradicted both by the actual preparation and passage of the emancipation legislation and by its results, for it contributed in a major manner to the decline of the gentry. By contrast, those specialists who emphasize the importance of the abolition of serfdom for the development of capitalism in Russia stand on much firmer ground. The specific provisions of the new settlement have also been defended and even praised, especially on the basis of the understanding that the arrangement had to be a compromise, not a confiscation of everything the gentry owned. Thus, the emancipation of serfs in Russia has been favorably compared to that in Prussia at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and land allotments of Russian peasants, to allotments in several other countries.
And yet the emancipation reform also deserves thorough criticism. The land allotted to the former serfs turned out to be insufficient. While in theory they were to retain the acreage that they had been tilling for themselves prior to 1861, in fact they received 18 per cent less land. Moreover, in the fertile southern provinces their loss exceeded the national average, amounting in some cases to 40 per cent or more of the total. Also, in the course of the partitioning, former serfs often failed to obtain forested areas or access to a river with the result that they had to assume additional obligations toward their onetime landlords to satisfy their needs. Khodsky estimated that 13 per cent of the former serfs received liberal allotments of land; 45 per cent, allotments sufficient to maintain their families and economies; and 42 per cent, insufficient allotments. Liashchenko summarized the settlement as follows: 'The owners, numbering 30,000 noblemen, retained ownership over some 95 million dessyatins of the better land immediately after the Reform, compared with 116 million dessyatins of suitable land left to the 20 million 'emancipated' peasants.' Other scholars have stressed the overpopulation and underemployment among former serfs, who, at least after a period of transition, were no longer obliged to work for the landlord and at the
